


lone and level

by saltstreets



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2015-05-11
Packaged: 2018-03-30 02:57:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3920311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltstreets/pseuds/saltstreets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe this isn't his anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lone and level

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the match against Valencia, 9/5/15.

 

 

It’s nearly midnight, and Iker breaks into the Bernabeu.

He comes here at quiet hours sometimes when he can’t sleep or when he needs the space of the wide open pitch to think. He’s never thought of it as _breaking in_ before because this place is his _home,_ you don’t break into your own home, but tonight, maybe, it feels a little like breaking in. Like maybe this isn’t his anymore.

It’s just that one little thought but once Iker lets it slip in a wall in his head comes crashing down and a sheet of despair like driving rain rushes through him, hammering against him and dragging him down. He’s standing at the edge of the pitch on the goal line having walked a quarter of the way around from the tunnel, and now he staggers a few steps over to sink against the goal post, the sudden misery of it all realising itself in awful clarity.

 _Maybe this isn’t his anymore_. God, but he used to be the conductor of the symphony that is Real Madrid, the players and the supporters alike under the wave of his arms, keeping in time with the tempo he set.

And hasn’t he given this place everything he’s got? Hasn’t he bled, sweat, and wept for this team, these people, this city? Hasn’t he put up with the _shit_ he’s been getting in return now for months on end, enduring on the pitch and screaming at himself more than anyone else once away from the crowds?

He tips his head back to thump it quietly against the goal post, looking up at the night sky and the dark clouds still moving serenely by, unaffected by the small tragedies being played out on the earth below.

The pitch is half-lit by the silvery moon waning in the sky and the soft glow of Madrid peeking up over the edges of the stadium. The stadium, his home. He’s being turned out of his home.

He’s tried ignoring it, avoiding unfriendly newspapers and magazines and pushing his way past the lesser journalists who swarm like midges in summer around every door and corner. He’s been through anger, biting his lip as he stands between the posts, fists clenched inside his gloves, finally snapping and retaliating at the boos and whistles. And now he supposes this, this is something like misery. Perhaps he really is more of a hindrance than a help. Maybe he is a deadweight dragging Real down into the depths with him as he slips further and further past his prime.

Above the stadium, the clouds move on.

If this were a movie, Iker thinks a bit deprecatingly, he’d have something poignant to shout at the clouds. Something poetic and touching. Something that took a team of screenplay writers several hours to word correctly with just the right balance of heartbreak and philosophy. Something about the pointlessness of it all.

But Iker’s not a team of writers. He’s just a footballer who’s had enough. So he says that next best thing, and pretty much all he can think of. “Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , f-”

“I gotta agree with you there,” says a voice somewhere above his head and Iker jumps a bit at the unexpected newcomer but doesn’t twist his head to see who it is because the voice is as familiar as his own. Even taken by surprise and wanting to be alone, Iker’s subconscious curls towards it like a plant to the sun.

“What are you doing here, Iker,” Sergio asks gently, tone light but with an undercurrent of worry that Iker doesn’t like hearing there.

He thinks for a moment about standing up, about shrugging his shoulders, making his excuses, and brushing aside Sergio’s concern. He thinks about wearily climbing back up to the stony tower of indifference he’s been crouching in for so long and sending Sergio on his way. He thinks about being the captain of Real Madrid, as unruffled and unaffected as the clouds above him.

He thinks about it, and if it were anyone else but Sergio here now he would have done it, he would have raised himself up on leaden legs and donned his armour, as thin and cracking as it was.

But it _is_ Sergio and so Iker stays where he is, just tilts his head to meet Sergio’s eyes. He doesn’t say anything but Sergio’s solemn expression crumples into something a bit like panic. “Oh _Iker,_ ” he says, sounding almost horrified at something he sees in Iker’s face, and he goes down on his knees to the grass next to him. “Iker, you can’t listen to it all, you _can’t._ ” He sounds so upset and so un-Sergio-like that Iker wants only to put his captain’s mask back on, crank a smile onto his face and reassure Sergio that he’s fine but he just doesn’t have it in him. He’s bone-tired and some last bastion of strength, whatever it was that had kept his feet moving and his ears deaf to the poisonous whispers turning to roars, has finally splintered and left him defenceless. The tide of doubt and fear, ever-present but held back for so long, is coming in.

Iker shakes his head. “It’s just,” he starts and then stops himself. “I. It’s been a long season.”

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Sergio tells him fiercely, his hand gripping tightly at Iker’s knee. “It’s easy to criticise from the stands. It’s difficult to play on this pitch. To wear this jersey. They could never fucking know a thing. You can’t listen to them.”

“I know,” Iker half-whispers, speaking with a sort of horror at the words welling up in his mouth but unable to stop them from spilling out. “And there are always going to be people complaining, of course, but Sergio, so many? Everyone and their mother, always with the shouting and the whistling, and I know my form has been off and I want to ignore it and push past but maybe, maybe they’re _right_ , maybe I should leave, go now before I’m forced out, I’m not helping anymore I’m just-”

He’s beginning to ramble a bit panicked, staring at his knees drawn up to his chest and plucking anxiously at the grass and Sergio cuts him off, shaking Iker with a big, familiar hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do this to yourself, Iker,” he says, almost pleading. “You...you’ve made mistakes. Here and there. Like I do, like everyone does. It is just the unfairness that when a keeper makes a mistake, it can be more, um, noticeable than when, say, a midfielder does.”

Iker smiles weakly. “You mean, I let in a goal and a midfielder just loses possession.” It’s not exactly a comforting thought in the traditional sense but he’s glad that Sergio’s saying it. He’s glad that Sergio isn’t protesting Iker’s claims of poor form, isn’t showering his with weak praise, isn’t trying to patch him up with thin plaster. He’s good like that, Sergio is, always knowing what Iker needs and doesn’t need to hear.

He isn’t finished, either. “A keeper’s mistake draws more criticism than any other player’s, and Real Madrid’s mistake draws more criticism than any other team’s.” Sergio is rubbing the back of Iker’s neck with his thumb, little circles keeping Iker aware of his presence, solid and reliable and so painfully loyal beside him. “It’s the way of things.” His voice gains a harder edge from the soft tone he’d been using. “But that also means that our victories mean more. All the things we do right? They mean more. Because we are Real Madrid.” Sergio turns Iker sideways to face him. “And you _have_ victories. You do so much right. You do more than enough right. And Iker?” He tucks a curled finger under Iker’s chin, forcing his captain to meet his eyes. “You _are_ Real Madrid.”

Iker opens his mouth but Sergio shakes his head quickly and jabs a finger into Iker’s chest. “Don’t say anything. Actually listen to what I’m telling you for once.”

Iker listens. He doesn’t speak but just looks at Sergio, who pulls him in to tuck against his side, wrapping his arm securely around Iker’s shoulders.

They sit there for a few minutes saying nothing, Iker concentrating on keeping his breathing even and Sergio just holding him. Sergio is so often the loud and frenetic one of the two (and Iker loves him for it even during the times when he’s fighting the urge to strangle the life out of the big defender) but when needed he is also this: quiet and steady, all bricks and scaffolding propping Iker up against the world.

“Things must be bad if you’re actually dispensing good advice,” Iker breaks the silence, sounding muffled where he’s pressed his face against Sergio’s shoulder but effectively keeping the quaver out of his voice. Honestly the last thing he needs is to start crying into Sergio’s surprisingly tasteful button-down.

Sergio laughs, a deep sound that reminds Iker somewhat irrationally of the way brandy tastes. “Yeah, well, one of us has to be sensible. We’ll get you back to shouting at me soon enough.”

“How did you even know I was here, anyway?”

“Sara. I- I went to your house. She told me you come here sometimes. When you need to.”

Iker wants to ask why Sergio was looking for him in the first place but he feels as though the answer would have brought them closer to that undefined territory –not explicitly forbidden but vaguely discouraged between them for years- where he didn’t want to go. Especially not while he was sniffling into Sergio’s shirt and feeling very much _not_ the captain that he should be.

There’s an awkward beat where the question Iker didn’t ask would have gone, like a jumped measure in time and Sergio clears his throat and says, “Too bad we can’t see any stars.”

It’s only a step up from commenting on the weather so far as conversation fillers go, and Iker has a sudden realisation that he _should_ have asked the question after all. He hates it when Sergio has to make almost-weather comments when talking to him. Theirs is not the sort of stilted dialogue that should require such things. He’s long ago abandoned the steely facade of the captain with Sergio. Sergio, his defence both on and off the pitch. Sergio, whom he shouted and roared at, and smacked around the ears with his gloves when he didn’t pay attention and who was always hanging off of him during practice and who came to find him in the middle of the night to tell him everything was alright when everything so clearly wasn’t. Sergio.

“Why were you looking for me?” Iker says suddenly all in a rush, asking the question a minute late but still asking, pushing the words out into the open where they belonged before he could change his mind.

Sergio had clearly been waiting for the question a moment ago but upon hearing it now he starts slightly. Iker can feel him tense and he pulls away from the half-hug to look Sergio in the eye.

“I’m your co-captain and we didn’t talk, just us, after the match. I wanted to- and well- I thought you could use some company. I was worried. About, you know, everything.” He’s hedging.

Iker tips his head to the side and he would be almost disappointed with the answer except that he knows Sergio is leaving something out. “Sese. Why were you looking for me?” He’s not entirely sure what he’s waiting for, but he knows that when it happens he’ll recognise it.

“I told you. I was worried. I didn’t- I was worried. And I looked for you _now_ instead of waiting because I wasn’t worried about my captain or my team –well I mean obviously I was but right _now_ \- I was worried about _you_ , Iker Casillas, I was worried about my friend.” Sergio knocks his knee against Iker’s. “And hey, looks like I was right to be.”

It’s not what Iker is waiting for, but it’s enough for now. Iker stands up and Sergio follows, his hand automatically going to rest at the small of Iker’s back, as if to steady him or just to provide grounding.

They walk down along the goal line but when Iker takes a step in the direction of the tunnel and his exit Sergio shakes his head. “Ah, I came from the other way.”

Iker frowns. “The other- how did you get in, anyway?”

Sergio laughs. “Iker, just because you’re the captain doesn’t mean you’re the only one who knows how to sneak into the Bernabeu. I have my ways.” His grin fades into something more serious. “Are you going to listen to me, Iker? What are you going to do?” He’s not talking about exits anymore. Or maybe he is. But in a different meaning of the word.

“I don’t know.” Iker says quietly. “I don’t know yet.”

Sergio’s hand had fallen away when they had begun to walk but he reaches out again now, taking Iker’s hands in his own. “You know I’ll always support you, whatever you do.” It’s not a question. It’s already an answer.

Iker smiles. “Yeah, I know.”

The grip on his hands squeezes for a moment, and Sergio leans in to kiss him on both cheeks, the familiar action comforting.

“At least you know something.” Sergio grins, and hesitates just a fraction of a second before pressing a third kiss softly to Iker’s lips.

In theory the kiss isn’t much different than the previous two, isn’t much different than the hundreds of kisses Sergio had brushed against his cheek, his forehead, and sometimes the end of his nose when he was tipsy. In theory it should mean nothing more than those other kisses had: security, belief, support. In theory there should have been no reason why Iker’s breathing had settled comfortably when Sergio kissed him the first two times but had caught in his throat at the third.

The contact is brief and almost unbearably gentle before Sergio is stepping away and giving Iker a small push. “Go on home, captain. Get some sleep.”

The words are light and casual even if the preceding action had not been. Iker watches Sergio turn and walk away to the adjacent corner of the stadium, hopping over the barrier to climb up the steps, and it’s not until he disappears behind the stands that Iker recognises what he had been waiting for.

**Author's Note:**

> _'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:_   
>  _Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'_   
>  _Nothing beside remains. Round the decay_   
>  _Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare_   
>  _The lone and level sands stretch far away._
> 
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> I USED SHELLEY AND NOW AM COVERED IN MELODRAMATIC CHEESE. SORRY.
> 
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> 
> So I got dragged kicking and screaming into Real Madrid (the perpetrator...you know who you are) and hi, here I am, emotionally compromised and ATTACHED
> 
> If Iker leaves I’ll probably cry. I thought he was hot even while Spain was crushing Germany 2008-12, and that’s the kind of enduring love that just can’t be replaced.


End file.
